


Dilettante

by miecroft



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, harry is gr8 and super wise, like really a ton of angst, this is really sad and nothing like this should ever be done again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1786642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miecroft/pseuds/miecroft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look at me,” Harry ordered. “I will always be here, always.”</p><p>It wasn’t a lie. </p><p>Thirty-three years later, it was. </p><p>***</p><p>The only things left: a body, a syringe, and some dust particles. Johnlock oneshot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dilettante

I wrap the telephone cord around my hand. I wish that it will pull and pull until my fingers fall lifeless from my hands and into the dirt.

I wish that the earth would swallow me like the earth has swallowed him.

* * *

“There is no pain that is not loss.” My hands lie in a puddle on my lap, and a foreign hand that belongs to my wife clutches my arm as a tall man with a narrow nose starts to cry. He slowly morphs into an umbrella, raindrops slipping off the brim and staining the wood floor.

“Not again,” I whisper, but this time there are no “I heard you”s, no more grave-standing and hiding behind trees, staring at a shell of a man. “No more.”

The funeral is over as soon as it started. The pain will never end.

* * *

 Mrs. Hudson wants me to gather his things immediately. Not this time.

This time I sit in my chair and hold the skull so that it faces me. I let its glare devour me, and I dissolve into a pillar of salt that is easily brushed away by a sweep of someone’s robe sleeve. “You’re my only friend now, huh? You’re the only one who understands.”

She suggested that she give Sherlock’s supplies to a school, but I told her that I wouldn’t allow it. She seemed to understand. They always believe that they do truly understand.

The dust particles glaring at me from sunbeams look like powder, and they taunt me with syringes of fraudulent happiness. They dance like lovers.

Lot’s wife looked back at a rapidly collapsing city of dust, and she turned to salt. She could not bear to forget her falling home.

* * *

“You know why he did it, correct?” The tall man with the narrow nose leans on his umbrella and looks down at me, and I’ve only felt smaller when Harry would taunt me for being unable to reach the biscuit jar that sat in our tallest cabinet.

I say nothing, but stare at the eyes of a destitute man who has lost all but everything else. I close my eyes.

“He was in love with you.” My hands clump into fists as he practically spits it out, the hurling words of a grieving brother who expected more of me than a coward. “He picked up the syringe and died because he was afraid that he failed you.”

I swallowed. “Whatever happened to his last vow?” I whisper as softly as I can.

“I’ll give you a hint.” He leant down and lifted my chin up with his finger. “He broke it. My brother always keeps his promises until he can’t bear the guilt on his shoulders anymore.”

Silence once again. “Do you want to hear what he told me right before he died?” Again, no answer.

The tall man pulled his phone out of his pocket and hovered his thumb above something. “This,” he said, clicking on it, “Is the voicemail I received thirty minutes before he was found.”

There was an almost serene silence at the beginning. Sherlock’s voice boomed onto the speakers, so small and so vulnerable. “How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,” he said. “The world forgetting, by the world forgot.” A sigh. “I’m sorry, Mycroft.”

Mycroft put the phone back in his pocket. “I called Greg and the police, in that order. It was quick. But he was happy, for a while. He was happy when he was with you.”

“I knew.” My voice cracks like the syringe must’ve when it fell from his hand onto the floor.

“I knew before he did. And yet I did nothing about it. I suppose this is somewhat my fault.” Mycroft’s eyes narrowed. “I should have told him to stay away. Sent him to Japan.”

“Why didn’t you?” My eyes are glued to the floor. The tiles look like they were stained with sand.

“Because I thought you were different. I genuinely believed that for once, my brother wouldn’t end up heartbroken with a needle in his arm. And you were, for the most part.”

I nodded slowly, raising my head. I deserved this. I deserved all this weight.

The tall man looked at me and saw the guilt in my eyes, relaxing his shoulders. “Can I just ask you one thing?”

I nodded again. “What?” I could see what was coming next

“Did you love him?”

A million images start to fill my head, of holding hands and whispering, “people will talk”, because people never listen. People never listen to their own heartbeats; the way their eyes scream of passion whenever they glance at someone certain. I remember nodding approvingly after finding out that he didn’t have a boyfriend. I remember my mouth constantly barraging those who asked with the answer “I’m not gay” instead of “I don’t love him” or “We’re not a couple”. I remember watching a figure fall off a roof to save me, leaving me with the emotional destitution of a desert for two years. I remember shaving for the man who liked his doctors clean-shaven, my heart pounding in my chest, screaming _Is it true? Does he love me?_ like the idiot he always called me. I remember grabbing his knee on my stag night, opening myself up to a world of destruction and possibilities before a case came knocking down the door. I remember passing by the open bathroom and seeing him shirtless, staring at himself in the mirror, and wanting to grab his face and whisper “You’re beautiful, I promise”, as I kiss him over and over again.

I remember now.

“Yes.”

His face softened. “I’m sorry, John. You didn’t have much of a choice.”

I nodded again. “There were plenty I could’ve made before the wedding.”

The tall man says nothing.

* * *

“You knew, didn’t you?”

My wife says nothing. AGRA melts to the floor, leaving behind a trail of smoldering guilt. “Since I met him.”

“Is that why you shot him?” My hands clench into fists. “Is it?” I start to move towards her. “Because it doesn’t make much sense for you to just shoot him when he caught you, because he offered you help. There could’ve been an understanding. But you had to try and kill the one person who was getting in the way of your marriage.”

Mary doesn’t cower, she doesn’t shroud herself from me. “I’m a trained assassin, John. I would’ve killed him if I wanted to.”

“That’s not the point.” I grind my teeth and hold myself back from anger. Everything around me starts to blur, and she’s only a blonde head in a blue dress now. “Answer me. Please.”

“Yes.” Her voice becomes as weak as mine. Her eyes begin to well up with tears. “I didn’t want you to realize that you belonged together, so I fired a warning shot before it would happen.”

We stand still for a moment, and I grab her and hold her as tight as I can, burying my eyes in her neck. She holds my head tenderly and rocks me. “I understand if you want to leave.”

I say nothing for a moment, but nod. “I’m sorry,” I say eventually, and it feels like the truth, but it drips off my tongue like a blatant lie and creates a red hole in the floor.

* * *

_Is this really what he wanted?_

I tenderly open the shades and allow light to come into the room, and it someone creates silence in the room, despite the telly being on.

_Is this what he wanted for me?_

My tea tastes like salt, and when I look down there’s a pillar of salt floating on top of it, with crumbling buildings surrounding it. I blink and it disappears.

Somewhere, a cavern opens in my heart and a small voice escapes. _He was always serving you. He gave you what he thought you wanted_. It sews itself up again, and I sit with one leg crossed over the other, staring at a game show on the telly but yet staring at nothing.

Mrs. Hudson comes over and sits in his chair, and I’m about to bark at her for invading such a holy spot, but I hold myself back and eat a biscuit that she hands me. She is Harry, after laughing at me and patting my head, reaching up on the shelf and tenderly placing one from the jar in my hand. She smiles weakly. Harry smiles brighter than I’ve ever seen.

It’s raining for the first time in a week. I want to put on my raincoat and jump outside, splashing in puddles and soaking my clothes until I strip myself of them and becoming nothing, just an invisible figure laughing and playing in an ocean of cloud’s tears, screaming with delight until his voice breaks.

I want Harry to grab my hand and put me on her shoulders while laughing hysterically, running through puddles with rain boots on, trying not to slip, grabbing my legs with full force each time she thinks she might. I want her to lift me off and kiss my head, calling me “little brother” over and over again, I want her to be nourished by love instead of alcohol, I want to remember reciprocated adoration again, I want to be a child again.

“John?”

  
I snap back to reality and scratch my head. “Sorry, what?”

Mrs. Hudson’s expression softens and she takes my hand. “Are you thinking about him?”

I want Sherlock to be the one hoisting me on his shoulders. I want him to be the one kissing me and calling me “love” over and over again. I want him to hand me biscuits from the shelves that I can’t reach. I want to feel his hand in mine, fully aware of the fact that people will always talk, that people never listen. “Yes,” I say, absently.

She leans back in her chair. “Me too. I can’t stop.”

I look down at my hands, which are clasped together for dear life. “I loved him. More than anyone.”

A hand is placed on my shoulder and I say nothing. “I know.” It drowns out, repeating, tumbling down the bathroom sink, racing back and forth like a tornado so it gets louder with every second until it disappears entirely. It’s still not as loud as my heartbeat.

“In some ways, I think it’s better to leave things unspoken.” It’s a lie, and I realize it right when it slips out.

“Oh dear, that’s never the right decision. It’s going to keep racing through your head until you can’t bear it anymore.” She pauses, putting on hand on my cheek and turning my head towards hers. “Look at me.”

“I didn’t do the right thing, did I?”

Her eyes bore straight into mine. “You did what you had to do to protect your heart. Sometimes it’s best to open it, knowing full well that anything will fly into the wound.”

I nod and she lets me go, holding her tea so softly it could slip through her fingertips if she put any less pressure on it. “Do you want some more biscuits?”

* * *

When I was eight and Harry was eleven, she took me to a forest a few blocks away from our house. She told me that it was her favorite place in the world, and she took off running on the dirt path, leaving me huffing along in a heavy coat, calling out for her to wait up. But she was already up in the clouds, laughing and yelling whenever she saw a bird or heard crickets, hopping over oak roots and letting the damp mud soak her sneakers until there were only small pockets of white left.  
  
At one point, I stopped to catch my breath and saw a glimpse of ginger seep through the trees before vanishing. I panicked and said nothing as the peaceful noise of crickets became menacing and foreign, making me feel trapped. I called out for her a few times before sitting down and defeat and sobbing on the forest floor. The next thing I knew, a pair of arms enveloped me and I cried into Harry’s shoulder, as she promised me that she would never leave me and that I didn’t have to worry about her abandoning me.  
  
“Look at me,” Harry ordered. “I will always be here, always.”  
  
It wasn’t a lie.  
  
Thirty-three years later, it was.

* * *

“He loved dancing. He said that he’d never told anyone before, so I figured that you didn’t know,” Janine told me. She called me soon after just to tell me this.

And that’s what I dream of. Of Sherlock, in his dressing gown, beckoning me with a fingertip as he does pirouettes and practically leaps across an empty ballroom. I watch his graceful motions as he smiles like I’ve never seen him smile before, laughing to himself like Harry laughed to herself when she danced through the empty woods.

I stand there for a minute until he comes over and grabs my hand, leading me to the middle of the floor and waltzing with me like we did right before my wedding under artificial lighting, horns blaring in the street below. Whenever I step in the wrong direction, he scowls and berates me for not being prepared for my wedding.

I grab Sherlock’s face. “There is no wedding anymore. I don’t want Mary. I want you.”

Sherlock looks at my hand as if it’s an alien object and holds it tenderly, looking back at me. “Really?” His eyes soften, melting as though they have just been pulled out of the microwave.

“Yes, Sherlock. I love you. Do you hear me?”

Sherlock’s eyes melt more, and the rest of his face begins to as well. “John?” He asks, panicking as his left ear falls off. “Can you hear me?”

My eyes start to swell with tears. “Yes, yes, I can hear you. I’m here. I should’ve been there before, but I’m here now. I can make it up to you.”

But Sherlock melts along with his face, until he’s nothing but a puddle on the floor, with nothing left but a pale blob and a fully intact cream-colored carnation resting on top of it. I pick it up and crush it with my palm, leaving only scattered petals that blow away with a sudden gust of wind.

* * *

Mary isn’t bitter. She visits me in 221b every day and has tea. She understands, which is probably the best thing I could have hoped for at this point. She tells me stories about Sherlock that I’ve heard a thousand times, but they are still comforting.

“What do you want to name the baby?” She asks two weeks later, out of the blue.

My eyes start to water, and my throat chokes up. For the first time today, I allow myself to cry. “It’s not even a question, is it? Sherlock.” I lick my teeth to gather the taste of his name on my tongue.

She smiles and hands me a tissue from the counter. “I figured as much. What about the middle name?”

I put my head in my hands, wiping the tears from my eyes and then raising my head level with hers. “Harry.”

Her current pout morphs into a soft grin. “Has she called lately?”

I say nothing, looking straight ahead at a slightly different angle from her eyes. “She finally did yesterday.”

“I’m glad. What did she say?”

I open my mouth a bit, and then closed it, smiling. “She asked me if I remembered the biscuit jar.”

“The what?” Mary’s hand, which was on my back, lowers to her leg.

My voice becomes a lot softer. “When I was little, Harry would tease me because I couldn’t reach it. It was up on the highest shelf in our kitchen. And when I would get upset at her for making fun of me, she would grab it and give me one.”

Mary nods slowly. “What does that have to do with Sherlock?”

My smile grows. “When I told her that I did remember, she said that every single time, I forgave her for doing it. That no matter how many times I got mad at her or told her that I hated her, it was always a lie.”

_“And you have to do the same for yourself. Don’t say that you hate yourself for letting this happen, because it’s not the truth. Your mistake was yours, and it was genuine, but he made his choices too. You can’t go on and forget how much you loved each other. It’s not what he would want.”_

_“He thought that I would be happier without him. And that dying would be better than me not loving him.”_

_“Was he right?”_

_“Of course not!”_

_Her voice softens. “Then prove it to him. Be happy, but include him in your thoughts. Let him know that you can be happy without him living, but that you can’t be happy without him.”_

Mary nodded as if she understood, although she clearly didn’t. She never would. “Harry’s smart. You should listen to her.”

I grab an apple from the fridge and take a bite, letting the sweet taste drip down my throat. “I almost always do.”

* * *

In my dream, I am behind Sherlock, who is running through the halls of a library. I try to grab his hand, but every time, he just yells “RUN!” and increases his speed, darting across aisles of books, some of them falling from shelves with the passing of his coat.

“Wait, Sherlock!” I trip over a copy of As I Lay Dying and curse the irony, continuing to run as Sherlock’s figure becomes smaller and smaller. He stops suddenly, and I run until I bash into him, and both of us fall to the ground.

“What the hell, Sherlock?” I rub my head and stand up, looking at Sherlock, who is half lifeless and lying on the ground. I lean down to touch his shoulder and he laughs, grabbing my hand instead and pulling me down next to him.

We face each other, and he smiles. I can feel my heart warming every cold part of my body, and he laces his fingers through mine. “I forgot to hold your hand,” he whispers, before he disappears and my fingers are holding nothing but his remains floating in the air.

* * *

Harry comes to visit for the first time in years. “How are you doing?” She asks, sipping some hot cocoa. “Actually, don’t answer that. That’s a stupid question.”

I shrug my shoulders. “Better. But still pretty shitty.”

“That’s understandable.” She moves her mug down, holding it with her jumper covering her pale hands. “At least you don’t cope with your problems the way I did. My little brother is smarter than I am.”

“It’s not much good, though.”

She pouts. “I drink to avoid my problems. I became addicted to the ultimate fantasy of drinking and forgetting everything. You’re strong enough to face what your pain.”

I look at her, and she’s staring out the window, her bright orange hair just as bright as I remember when I was eight. “You were the strongest person I knew when we were younger.”

She looks back at me, smirking and reaching out for my hand. She squeezes it, filling my body with a wave of comfort that I hadn’t felt since Sherlock died. “That was before I discovered alcohol.” She winked.

I don’t know how to respond, but I don’t have to, because Harry puts down her mug and enfolds me in the most reassuring hug I may have ever been given. “I’m sorry, John.”

 

I hold her tight, tears falling from my chin and disappearing in her jumper. I want to be swallowed by the tight-knit stitches that swallow her.

* * *

I dream that I lie next to Sherlock, but when he wakes up, he fades into the light and there is only an indent left in his pillow. When I wake up, there is nothing but warmth.

The dust particles that cloak the air whisper _“I love you”_ as I close my eyes, drifting off to see him again.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is taken from a [St. Vincent](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/stvincent/dilettante.html) song that I am very fond of.


End file.
